View Single Post
  #56   Report Post  
Posted to alt.home.repair
Chris Lewis Chris Lewis is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 856
Default Glueing a broken plastic refrigerator shelf

According to larry moe 'n curly :

Joe wrote:
My wife put 2 cartons of milk on the same shelf and that proved to be
too much weight for it and both back corners snapped off in almost
identical pieces. I've never had success gluing two pieces of plastic
together to support weight but I'd like to try something different and
see if it works. I'm going to take my Dremel and drill about 6 holes
in each side of the pieces to be joined. Then I'm going to insert
pieces of a paper clip into each hole to act as reinforcement for the
glue to adhere to much in the same way rebar works in cement. Has
anyone had any success with this? I'm thinking if nothing else it will
increase the surface area of the connection. Any hints on making it
work better? I'm going to use Gorilla Glue to join the pieces because
it will expand into the holes


Aren't most plastic pieces inside refrigerators made of PVC? If so,
you want to use solvent, not glue, to fix them. Acetone or laquer
thinner will work, but hobby shops and electronics supplies. have
stuff made especially for gluing plastic models and TV cabinets.


Acetone doesn't work that well on PVC. PVC glue has small quantities
of acetone, but the main ingredients is MEK, Tetrahydrofuran,
PVC resin and some other solvents. Model airplane glue is acetone
based aimed for use on polystyrene. Laquer thinner is largely MEK
I think, but it's not designed as a glue, it'll be messy, and
glue joints probably brittle because it has no "body" to it.

Best way to glue PVC is PVC pipe glue.

I've done some major repairs to ABS-based devices using ABS
pipe glue (rebuilt a leaf blower after the impeller came apart
and demolished the blower housing. Bought a new impeller (no
way a glued one was going to balance let alone stay together,
but the housing was pieced back together). I'm sure that PVC glue
will work as well on PVC. Throwing scrap bits of PVC in as
reinforcements will help too.
--
Chris Lewis,

Age and Treachery will Triumph over Youth and Skill
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.